her wrist; it wasn’t just servicemen who clung to amulets.
I added, But it could have gone very much worse, really.
I’d have liked to tell Tim about the odd redhead who’d helped me today. But an uneducated girl with cracked shoes, raised in a home, lodging at a convent—Bridie might sound as if she were the opening line of a joke. I couldn’t seem to find words for her.
Tim took saucepan lids off two plates and set them down at our places.
He’d waited all this long dark evening to eat tepid food with his big sister. But he didn’t care for gush, so all I said was Oh, Tim, you’ve outdone yourself. Runner beans!
Another faint smile.
Before the war my brother had been rather more quick-witted and chipper than I. Like Bridie, actually—a real spark to him.
So you must have been at the allotment today.
(We had only an eighth of an acre, but Tim worked wonders.)
Potatoes were as scarce as gold nuggets. Tonight’s ones were perfect dimpled globes, the size of acorns. Barely boiled, skin still crisp to the teeth.
I had a qualm. It’s wasteful not to leave them in the ground till they’re bigger, though, isn’t it?
My brother shrugged grandly.
There were onions too, of course; we had them coming out our ears. (The government would approve.) The lettuce was holed with a few slug bites but tasted ever so alive.
And look at this, celery! They’ve started selling it as a nerve cure, would you believe?
I thought that might amuse Tim. But his face stayed blank. Maybe the notion of shattered nerves hit too close to the bone.
At the military hospital, they’d called it war neurosis. It could take a bewildering variety of forms, and even civilians got it; there was that Englishwoman who’d lost her mind in an air raid and decapitated her child.
They’d dosed Tim with chloral to prevent the nightmares, or at least to make him forget the details when he woke up groggy; it gave him a perpetually queasy stomach. Massages to soothe, walks to invigorate, hypnosis to get my brother’s mind back on track; lessons in brush-making, carpentry, boot repair to make him useful.
Tim had been discharged after a few months since he was fairly able compared to so many others. The psychologist had admitted he could do nothing for the speechlessness, and they needed the bed. The prescription was rest, nourishment, and congenial occupation.
I’d weaned Tim very gradually off the sedative. These days he was less jumpy, though he still couldn’t stand crowds. Rather more able to eat, especially if I ate with him. I just had to trust that quiet and pottering about—gardening, shopping, cooking, cleaning, tending his magpie—would mend him in time.
Anything come in the post this morning?
My brother shook his head and made a gesture with his hands.
I didn’t follow.
Pointing into the hall, he shook his head again, almost crossly.
Never mind, Tim.
He was scraping back his chair and tugging out the table’s shallow drawer, the one that always stuck.
It doesn’t matter, really.
I couldn’t bear it when Tim had to grab the notebook to make himself understood to me, the nearest thing to a mammy he’d ever had; it made me feel we were thousands of miles apart.
He slid his jagged handwriting over so I could read: Temporary suspension.
Of the post? Oh, of delivery, I see. I suppose they’ve too many off sick at the sorting office. I added ruefully, At the hospital we’d never be allowed a suspension of service, not even for a day. Ours are the gates that can’t close.
I wondered how long it would take me to remember not to ask Tim whether any post had come that day. How many weeks before I stopped missing it? This was how civilization might grind to a halt, one rusted-up cog at a time.
I remarked: I ran into some lads dressed up and going around the houses. I’ve been wracking my brains—what was it the old ones used to sprinkle on us at Halloween to ward off the spells of the little people?
Tim held up the little glass cruet.
Salt! That was it.
I took it from him, reminiscent. I shook a little into my hand and half solemnly touched a pinch to my forehead and another to Tim’s.
He flinched at my touch, but bore it.
I was so glad Tim had had the flu already—the week before me, and just as mildly. Otherwise I’d be watching him every morning, every night. I’d feared losing my brother for years on end, and then he’d been